


Until the Very End

by ohmytheon



Series: Rebelcaptain AUs [10]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pushing Daisies Fusion, Dark Humor, Gen, Police Officer Cassian, Pushing Daises - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-22 23:21:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9629600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmytheon/pseuds/ohmytheon
Summary: Jyn has always considered her gift to bring things back to life (and return them back to death) with a touch more of a curse and has done her best to avoid it - until her psychic neighbor gets killed and an unwitting cop stumbles across her secret.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this reminded me of how much I miss that show and how long it’s been since I’ve seen it. (This also strangely makes me want to write a Dead Like Me AU, but that’s because I love Bryan Fuller’s weird brain.)

Jyn did not ask to be born with this strange gift and often considered it a curse. She could not anything other than begrudging since it had done little in the ways of helping her. The ability to bring back the dead with a single touch was too much power for one person to have, in her opinion, and the side effect of being able to take back that life with a second touch was cruel.

Like a child touching a hot stove top for the first time, she learned this the hard way. One second her mother was dead on the living room floor, shot and killed by an intruder; the next she was rocketing up into a sitting position after an eight year-old Jyn touched her face. Jyn could still remember the expression on her father’s face: shock, awe, confusion, and horror. She hadn’t been able to name that last one until many years later. Her mother had insisted she was fine and refused to go to the hospital, all the way until she tucked Jyn into bed and kissed her on the forehead goodnight and promptly dropped dead on Jyn’s bedroom floor.

It took a while for Jyn to understand the implication. Her father, ever the scientist, had seen the correlation right away, but he hadn’t told her about his suspicions over her, wanting to preserve what little childhood Jyn could gleam after watching her mother suddenly die twice in one day. But she had always been an inquisitive child, demanding answers to questions she didn’t even know to ask, and she had learned on her own.

Bringing dead animals on the side of the road back to life, rotten food from her father’s attempt at gardening blossoming into vibrant colors again – all with a single touch. And then the bird that had been smashed against a car window hopped onto her hand so willingly, as if wanting to thank her for its returned life, and the life was sucked out of it again. A shiny red tomato she dropped in shock that she picked up again to taste fading to nothing before it reached her lips.

She robbed things from the grave and returned it just the same. It was not Death, per say, so much as Life, because all Life ended with Death. She didn’t know why someone as irresponsible and reluctant to help others was given such a gift nor did she want or like it. Had she always had that gift and just never had the opportunity to touch a dead thing or was it awoken in her the second her mother died and she felt the pressing need to _bring her back_? It was a question that she was desperate to know, could never understand, and was too afraid to find out.

And so, like many things in her life (like her mother’s death, her father’s distance in his work, her lack of a focused path), she avoided it altogether. Jyn stayed away from Dead Things, no matter how many times they tried to cling to her in a desperate attempt to come back to life. She took out the obituaries section in newspapers; she only kept plastic plants in her apartment; she never adopted a pet; she didn’t watch the news or crime show dramas; she stayed away from hospitals, hospices, and everything in between.

But in her attempt to avoid Death, she missed out on a lot of Life as well.

Unable to connect meaningfully with people when she knew that it would only end with some sort of death, Jyn became distant with others. She lived a very solidary life. It wasn’t bad and she would never be one to complain of loneliness, but it wasn’t fulfilling. There was something missing, something so obviously gaping in her life that it was laughable, and she couldn’t even deny it. She wasn’t living up to her full potential, according to her next door psychic neighbor, Mothma. The woman, always draped in white, would bear down on Jyn at least once a week to tell her that she was wasting her talents. It was annoying, but not enough to convince Jyn to move.

Of course, Life couldn’t be avoided forever. It demanded to be known. Jyn was living in its world after all.

So when she walked to her apartment from a late night shift and found Mothma’s door slightly ajar, something that never happened considered the woman had at least five locks, Jyn could not stop herself from stepping inside and calling out. When she found the apartment trashed, her heart beat warningly against her chest. And when she saw the older woman dead on the floor, head smashed in by one of her own bowls, of course Jyn called the police. Then she sat and she waited, not wanting to leave the woman alone even in Death.

Jyn sat there in silence for what felt like forever, staring at the dead body, watching as her blood dried on the carpet, wondering, hearing her voice, “You are so much more than you are,” and she could not resist the pull. She crouched over the body and laid a hand against Mothma’s cold dead cheek.

Two things happened at once: Mothma’s eyes snapped open and connected with Jyn’s just as Mothma announced, “Ah, I knew you would bring me back the second the first blow came,” and a strangled, accented male voice from the front door gasped, “ _Holy shit_.” Jyn had been comfortable with Mothma knowing the truth about her gift, seeing as how she’d more or less guessed it already, but a stranger, especially a cop, she was not happy about.

“It’s not what you think!” Jyn practically shouted as she leapt to stand straight.

“I didn’t just see a very dead woman come back to life when you touched her?” the cop, a dark-haired man, demanded almost equally as frantically. “A woman that you – if you are Jyn Erso from Apartment 9F – reported killed just ten minutes ago?”

Well, Jyn didn’t know what to say to that, considering they did have her on tape dialing 911 and reporting her neighbor’s murder. Her no longer murdered neighbor who was currently standing up and straightening out her bloodied white robe.

“It was…a mistake,” Jyn attempted. “I saw her lying on the ground and panicked, but clearly she’d just fainted.”

“Oh no,” Mothma said cheerfully, “I was very much dead. Murdered, in fact. I know the chap too.” She picked up the bowl that had flakes of her blood and a patch of her hair on the lip and frowned. “I should’ve demanded payment up front. I don’t like to get murdered for free.”

Jyn’s eyes were so wide that she thought they might just pop out of her head. The cop was wearing the same expression her father had worn all those years ago when she had accidentally brought her mother back to life. She didn’t know what to do. All her brain kept saying was to _run_ and never look back. Pack up her things and go. She could become someone else, rebuild her life, start over in which no one knew about this curse.

“I’ll…uh, I’ll have to call this in,” the cop said.

“As what?” Jyn asked. “She’s clearly not dead.”

“But I was murdered,” Mothma pointed out. “Assaulted at the least – and ripped off.”

Jyn stepped forward and tried to give her most winning smile. It was terrible; she had never been a charmer. “Listen, Officer…”

“Andor,” he replied, “Cassian Andor.”

“Right, Officer Andor.” Jyn wrung her hands. “ _Cassian_. Why don’t we all just go home and pretend none of this ever happened? I think it’d be best for everyone involved to just…move on with their lives.”

Even though Cassian looked close to agreeing, simply out of a lack of a better answer, Mothma harrumphed. “Or you can find the man that did this to me. I was hit over the head very many times. Who better to be a witness to a murder than the person murdered?”

Jyn groaned. “You aren’t–”

“And I’ll even pay,” Mothma continued. “I can be your first customer and this kind gentleman can be your official police liaison.”

“Excuse me?” Cassian queried right as Jyn asked, “First customer?”

Mothma pointed a finger at Jyn. “You need to use your gift to become who you’re supposed to be. And you” – she pointed at Cassian – “are disillusioned by your colleagues and the job, but also have a genuinely good heart and want to help people.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Both of you are lacking – there is something missing in your lives – but I believe you can find it in each other and your respective skills.”

“I don’t think…” Jyn began, even as she started to actually consider it. Her gift had never helped her, but she had never stopped to think about what it could do to help others. She could give a voice to the voiceless. Give back what was stolen. Also, people would definitely pay. She wouldn’t be able to do it on her own though. She would need someone with proper credentials and official connections. Someone that knew the truth about her.

When Jyn turned to face Cassian, he was already looking at her and she knew by the determined look on his face that he had already made his decision. That good heart Mothma had mentioned was showing.

“How good are you at keeping secrets?” Jyn asked him.

“Well enough,” Cassian responded.

Jyn held out a hand. “I suppose that will have to do for now.” He took it and they shook hands. His skin was hot to the touch. Electricity seemed to run down her spine, like some sort of momentous, Fate-driven moment had just occurred. “Of course we’ll have to set some boundaries.”

“And you’ll need to get an official PI license,” Cassian added. Jyn fought the urge to roll her eyes. Great, she was working with a boy scout. But, as she watched him call the ambulance and back up off without even blinking, she had a feeling that he was going to be a good fit. He was already proving to be better at keeping secrets than just “well enough”. She could deal with that.


End file.
